TRUCE Speculative Fiction Workshop: Unconventional Computing in 2070
Monday, 02 September 2013 at ECAL 2013, Taormina, Italy.
Supported by the European Commission, in association with Comma Press.
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Artificial life is becoming increasingly important, not just to scientists, but to the wider global community. The growing challenges we face (energy, the environment, a changing demographic profile, to name but a few) will require inherently inter-disciplinary strategies. Artificial life and unconventional computing technologies will play an important role in addressing these issues.
In this unconventional workshop, we will create a vision for what the world might look like more than fifty years from now, when artificial life is embedded in our everyday existence. Our aim is to spark a wider debate about the applicability and relevance of unconventional computing techniques, and to imagine a long-term picture of how they may come to influence our lives. We offer a unique opportunity for scientists to collaborate with short story writers to create a published collection of speculative fiction based on the theme of “Unconventional Computing in 2070”. Scientists will work with authors to draft short stories with a “ucomp” theme, and provide an afterword to each story, describing the scientific background to the fictional work. Comma Press has a strong track record in producing such collections: Litmus was described as "An inspiring tribute to inquiring minds" (Guardian), and the Financial Times called Bio-Punk "Fascinating reading". Scientists will be required to “pitch” their ideas (based on their own research) prior to the workshop, and then the authors will each select at least one as the basis for their story (or stories). These will be drafted during July and August, then authors and scientists will come together in Sicily to refine the stories and draft the afterwords. All stories and afterwords will be collected together in a published volume. Because of the nature of the workshop, places will be strictly limited to no more than 10 scientists. |
Call for Story Ideas
In order to apply to participate, you should write one or two paragraphs describing a research idea that you think may have a significant impact on life in the future. Please ensure that your summary is understandable by the general lay-person, and thus contains a minimum of technical language. You should try to capture the essence of the idea, so that the authors can then construct a fictional vision around it.
Important Dates:Deadline for submission:
July 24, 2013 Selection notification: Start of August 2013 Story drafting: August 2013 Workshop: September 2, 2013 Please submit summaries (no more than 250 words) to Daphne Lai (truce-project-fp7@mmu.ac.uk). 
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Comma Press Authors
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